ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — Most pastors agree that one of the worst parts about being a pastor is making the call on whether to cancel Sunday services because of the weather.
“There are a variety of opinions,” said Kenny Rager, pastor of 12 Stones Baptist Church. “Some don’t think you should cancel, others think you should — it puts the pastor right in the middle of it every single time.”
But Rager said an idea generated by Mark Bishop, pastor in Louisville of GracePointe Baptist Church and GracePointe at Beechland, worked extremely well this past weekend.
Seeing the forecast for ice and heavy snow for the weekend, Rager met with church elders and church leaders and developed a plan to move the worship service up a day — meeting on Saturday morning instead of Sunday.
“By doing that before the snow came there were no problems,” Rager said. “My sermon was ready to go, and we said we were going to embrace whoever came.” The announcement was made Thursday morning of the schedule change and the result was “the least stressful snow situation I have ever dealt with,” Rager noted. “There was no stress at all. I praise God for it, and am so thankful Mark told me about that.”
There was more to the planning than just adjusting the day of the worship service. The church promoted on Facebook that it would be serving “snow cones and snow cream” after the service, appropriate for the snow forecast. People responded well to that offering — so much so that Rager reminded people they could not stay because of the impending weather.
“What a powerful time of worship and gathering we had,” Rager told the church in a Facebook post. “I so appreciate your willingness to embrace creativity. We were able to gather and exit safely before the snow came.
“I also want to say thank you to all of the volunteers who came today to help — nursery workers, coffee makers, sound booth workers, praise team, counters, greeters, ushers and the list goes on. Seriously, it was pretty incredible to see that.”
Rager told Kentucky Today that all the normal volunteers were there Saturday, and that 156 people attended — close to its normal average attendance of 200.
While noting there will be Sundays when the weather will surprise you at the last minute, he said “in situations where you know it is going to dump snow Saturday night or Sunday morning and everybody is worried about it, why not seize the moment for the gospel. You lose momentum when you don’t meet.”
Bishop’s service switch not the first time
Adjusting the timing for the service is nothing new for Bishop. “We had an ice storm last year and we saw it was coming, so we moved our Sunday morning service to Saturday evening,” Bishop said. Last Wednesday he and executive pastor Luke Lesmeister talked and prayed about what to do when the forecast became clear there would be heavy snow. They moved the Sunday service to 10 a.m. Saturday.
“We added breakfast, and we had 500-plus people, a $31,000 offering and an altar full. We have found that sometimes that Saturday breaks down walls and people respond to it. When I put out a video on it, a lot of pastors — some from out of state — saw the video we did and had an early service, too.”
Bishop said adding a service before a weather event results in not having a long break between services. “The problem is when you pull Sunday out, and like this week when it will be negative 3 on Wednesday, you wouldn’t have a worship experience for 13 days.” He said adding the Saturday service allows at least one service during that time period.
In addition to the excellent attendance, there was one person saved at the service. “It was awesome,” Bishop said.
In rare instances when the weather event doesn’t materialize, Bishop said there is no loss. “The worst thing you have done is have an extra service.” He observed that the Saturday service found “people were relaxed.”
He said not missing a service is helpful to churches “that run close on budget and can’t afford to miss a whole week.”
Making the move “is a lot of work, but Luke makes everything run. He had to find an entire music team and put the whole thing together. Every time we have done it, the juice is worth the squeeze. We always have had great services and great spirit — it’s almost like taking kids to church camp because they are not in their normal routine. Sometimes that is really a good thing.”
Chip Hutcheson is a content strategist for Kentucky Today, the online news website of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. He also does supply preaching and interim pastorates. He retired as publisher of The Times Leader newspaper in Princeton in 2017 after serving as a publisher for 41 years. He previously served as president of the Kentucky Press Association, Kentucky Baptist Convention and the National Newspaper Association.
